


Magnus and the Three Bears

by Aarlone



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aarlone/pseuds/Aarlone
Summary: Not long after the days of Story and Song, a druid in a remote forest befriends Magnus Burnsides, then enlists his help to save the forest from a sudden threat.Some violence is present, but it is not overly graphic.





	Magnus and the Three Bears

I’m one of those idiots that, upon hearing a bear roar, I run  _ towards _ the bear.

 

She crashed through the forest past me, obviously intent on something else and so, more fool I, I raced after her. It wasn’t long before I understood the reason for her agitation, however: the anxious bleat of a bear cub who had lost its mother and was face to face with something much larger.

A pattern arises…

 

I sped up, tapping into skills taught to me as a child - I scarcely even noticed anymore as my shape flowed into that of one faster, sleeker, and much more suited to the terrain. I overtook the mother bear, and now that I had access to better senses than in my normal form, I almost immediately knew where the baby bear was. There was a human with him and, yes, a lot of metal.

Shit.

 

He whipped around as I ran up, almost instinctively reaching for the massive battle axe strapped to his back, but before he could draw it, I had shifted back into my normal form. “Don’t touch him!” I gasped. “His mother is coming, and she is  _ pissed! _ ”

She wasn’t that far behind me - I saw him focus on her, running through the trees, and an expression I couldn’t quite read flashed across his scarred face: anger? frustration? blood lust? I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t want anybody to die today, if I could help it. First things first.

My hands whipped out and I concentrated on the earth the bear would soon run over; thick vines whipped out of the soil and wrapped around her limbs and body. As quickly as the vines sprouted, her sheer speed and fury brought her fifteen feet closer to us before the terrain became too troublesome to navigate, and she slowed to a halt. 

She was furious with me, now, too. 

“I’m so sorry!” the man shouted. “I didn’t mean to scare him! He looked lost!”

I sighed and focused on keeping the vines thick and strong. “Move away from him, please, and get behind me.”

“You’re gonna protect me from her?” He sounded amused. I shot him an irritated glare, and recognized him in that instant. The scar down one eye. The battle axe. The sideburns. 

It was hard to tell exactly what happened next. My concentration broke. Mama Bear tore her way out of the vines. Baby Bear started running in a circle around the clearing. Magnus Burnsides, one of  _ the _ Planar Heroes, went into a defensive crouch, spreading his arms wide and waving his hands frantically to draw Mama Bear’s attention away from me.

I mean, he probably didn’t need me to protect him from her, after all. All things considered.

Mama Bear charged at him, but he was ready for her and caught her up in, well… I can only call it a bear hug, and they tumbled to the ground together. Unfortunately, as they fell, a patch of earth gave way, and they also tumbled down a steep hill within the forest. “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiii--” Magnus’s oath was cut off, punctuated by a series of grunts and what sounded like more pained curses.

I allowed myself a few gasps to catch my breath, then called out a prayer to Silvanus before I dashed forward, scooped up the bear cub in my arms, and raced down the hill after the grappling pair. Was it my imagination, or did the oak leaf tattoo over my heart grow warm? It could have been a sign that my god had heard me! That had never happened before - not in any way that I’d been able to recognize. I slipped and skidded my way down the steep hill, with a squirming, bleating cub in my arms, but whether it was my own luck, or the blessing of Silvanus, we both made it to the bottom of the hill in one piece. 

Magnus and the bear were both picking themselves off the ground, both a little dazed. I let the cub spill out of my hands and run to his mother and dropped to my knees in front of her. As clearly as I could manage, I rattled out the words my grandmother had taught me years ago. I made the proper signs with one hand and dragged out something - anything edible - from the pouch at my side. The spell took hold after a few seconds, but I wasn’t sure of it until she eyed me doubtfully, nuzzled her cub, and lumbered off down towards the distant river. 

I heard Magnus groan off to one side. “That… could have gone better,” he muttered.

“Could have gone much,  _ much _ worse.”

“Yes.” He looked at me then. “Thank you. That was some quick thinking.”

I sagged as the adrenaline drained out of me, then realized I’d just been thanked  _ and _ complemented by Magnus “The Hammer” Burnsides, and couldn’t help but grin. “Sir? It was my genuine pleasure.”

He blushed visibly. “What kind of magic was that?” he asked, obviously keen to change the subject. I felt myself blush, as well. It was probably rude of me to refer to his fame. 

“A little conjuration, a little enchantment.”

“And the changing into a wolf? That’s a druid thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He hauled himself to his feet, and I saw that the bear had gotten in at least one swipe of the claw, for there was a group of long scores down his left side. They weren’t deep, but he was still bleeding. “I can heal that for you, as a matter of fact.”

He gave me a look, as though the thought had never occurred to him. “Oh. Uh, sure. If it’s no trouble.”

“It’s the least I can do for  _ you _ .” Damn. I brought it up again. I almost stammered out an apology, but he gave me a warm grin.

“Well, thanks for this, too.” I stood and approached him, and he twisted to one side so I could reach the wounds more easily. “What’s your name?”

“Saro.” It didn’t look like he was severely hurt (from the stories they told, he could take quite a beating anyway), but I spoke the words for one of my stronger healing spells, just in case there was damage I couldn’t see. He took a deep breath as the spell began, sighed as the shallow gashes closed with no hint of what had been there before. 

“Nice to meet you. What brings you out here?”

“I’m a druid?” I stepped back as he chuckled. “I could ask you the same thing. You’re out here all on your own?”

“Oh, I can take care of myself.” Absently, he patted various implements around his body, as though to ensure that everything was intact. Happily, nothing else appeared to have taken too much damage, but he did suddenly cast about, looking for something that had clearly gone missing. “Do you see a kind of globe? Full of water? Small enough to hold in your hand?”

I looked, too, and spotted the item, nestled in a bed of moss at the base of a tree a few feet away. “Here!” I plucked it from the earth; inside, a goldfish darted about. Magnus took it gently from my hands and peered inside.

“Sorry about that, Steven,” he murmured, then flashed me a grin as he fixed the globe back to his belt. “Thanks, again. Again. I came out here because I heard there was a grove of Heartswood trees in this forest, and I wanted to get some wood for a gift. I want it to be a surprise.”

I stepped back in alarm. “You’re going to chop down a Heartswood tree? For a  _ gift _ ?”

“No, no, no. Just… see if there were any fallen trees or branches. Or at most, cut off a good sized branch. I’m hoping I can get enough for a nice set of serving bowls, or something.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. Thank you. Um… you know how to remove a branch without harming the tree, right?”

His expression was blank. “You can’t just chop it off?”

I sighed again. “I know where the grove is. I’d better come with you.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, but he brightened up quickly. “Okay! I haven’t met a lot of druids! Can you tell me what it’s like?” He dropped his voice, suddenly very serious. “Can you talk to dogs?”

“Y-yes... “ 

Magnus’s eyes gleamed. “Can you teach me?”

“Do you know any other magic?”

“No. Is that a problem?”

“It might be.”

“Damn.” He scowled, then asked me, quite seriously, “Can you do me a favor? Can you please tell the next dog you meet that he or she is very good?”

I laughed. “As if I don’t already do that to every dog I meet!”   
  


That was all it took, it seemed, for us to become fast friends. We tromped through the forest together. Magnus told stories of both valor and practical jokes. I told him of my grandmother, and how for most of my childhood I remembered her as a mountain lion who could hold me to the ground with one paw. 

Magnus’s information about the location of the grove was a little inaccurate - something had been lost in translation, perhaps - and he’d been dropped about twenty miles south of a river that should have been a small forest village that marked the southern-eastern edge of the valley. All told, he was about thirty miles off course, although part of it was through some rough, uneven terrain, which would complicate the journey. Magnus harrumphed a little at this, but made the decision to not turn back. “It’s such a nice day, and I’ve already made it this far. Plus, I’ve already gotten to tussle with a mother bear,  _ and _ I met my first druid. Who knows what else could happen?” He cheerfully turned his face toward the sun. “This is what it’s all about.”

It was already late in the afternoon, and so after walking for a few hours and covering a good amount of ground, I raised the subject of finding a place to make camp for the night. “We could walk through the night and still get there, I’m sure,” I explained, “but we’d be going much more slowly.” 

“You’d be okay with walking all night?”

I hitched a shoulder. “I’m partly elven - I don’t need to sleep all that much.”

“It would still be better to camp for the night, I think. We can start early in the morning, and probably get there with plenty of time left in the day.” 

“In that case, I believe there are some caves to the east a bit that will make for some 

good shelter for the night. Smells like it’s going to rain.”

Magnus raised his gaze to the sky once again, peering through the treetops. The light had changed, not as it usually erupts in vibrant shades of red-orange as the sun set, but with a sickly yellow-grey. “You’re probably right. Let’s get moving.”

We heard the first rumble of thunder not long after Magnus spotted the caves ahead of us. We picked our way up the side of the bluff to where a sizeable cave could be easily reached, and even had enough time to gather some firewood before rain began to fall. Magnus built the fire while I used my own skills to clean the fox spoor out of our camping area. As we worked, I learned that not only had he been misinformed regarding the location of the grove, but the legend about it had also warped a little over the years. 

“The  _ full _ story,” I told him as we watched the rain fall through the trees from the safety and warmth of our little cave mouth, “is much better. A young woman who grew up in the village found herself called to worship Nusemnee; she had been quite cruel to certain others, but when her acts lead to a pair of deaths, her eyes were opened, and she realized she needed to atone for the evil she had put into the world.” 

“Who is Nusemnee?” he asked. “I haven’t heard of her.”

“She is a long-dead god, sadly, but in her godhood sought to elevate those who lived within evil but chose to reject it in favor of good and redemption.”

“Wow…” 

I smiled and rested my head against the cave wall. “My mother had learned of her, at some point in her life, and became fascinated with the story. Likely the reason I’m here today is because she learned that my father’s Circle is based in this very valley, where one can still find one of the goddess’s abandoned shrines.”

“She fell in love with him just over that?”

“Oh, the way Pop always talked, that was what started the fire. Which was lucky for him, because he’d already had a crush on her for months.”

“I love a good love story,” Magnus murmured. He turned to look at me. “It seems like a good sign.”

“Who can say? Anyway, the young woman left the village and spent many years adventuring, trying to live her life according to the principles of her new god. She saved many lives, and lifted still more from despair and loss. She returned to the village, not expecting to be forgiven for her actions, but to beg for the chance to at least be buried near the city at the end of her life. Her reception was chilly, but as she was meeting with the elders of the village, a great cry rang out through the village. Sometime in the night, a man had been killed by an owlbear, dragged off to the monster’s den. The young woman bade the elders to not worry, and swore to destroy this menace to the village. By nightfall she had returned, ragged and bloody, but clutching the head of the beast in her arms.”

“That’s badass!” 

“It is! She fell to her knees in the town center and refused any that tried to heal her, until very near to her last moments. A cleric came to her aid, but too late to help, only to hear her final words. With her last breath, she swore to her god that if she should allow her to live on as a spirit, she would continue to atone in her afterlife, and spent eternity protecting the people of this small village that she had once harmed so deeply.”

“So how did she become associated with the Heartswood tree?”

“She earned her burial, and Nusemnee heard her prayer, and answered it. The townsfolk buried her, not within the city, because in spite of her heroism, there were still the scars of her hurt. They found an assortment of seeds that she’d collected in her travels, and planted them over her grave. The tree took root and grew strong, and it became the Heartswood tree. As time passed, it became a custom of the village to tie a ribbon on a branch before apologizing to a friend or loved one. The young woman’s spirit inhabited that tree, and could sometimes be seen patrolling the surrounding forest. No beast attacked a resident of the village, or its environs, ever again - it wasn’t until Nusemnee herself was killed that her power granting the young woman’s last wish finally faded, and the village lost its spectral protector. Traditions around the Heartswood tree evolved, and so it came to pass that gifting a seed from the tree to one’s love came to mean what it does today - it is a promise of devotion and hope.” 

Magnus had grown still and silent. There was no more thunder, though the rain fell gently through the trees. “That is a better story,” he said at last. 

“Serving bowls from reclaimed wood will make a lovely gift. Whoever receives them will be blessed whenever they are used with love and an open heart.”

“That’s the important part. I’m glad that that, at least, is true.”

I chuckled. “It’s not quite as salacious as the current legend, but yes, the important part has thankfully survived.” 

He gazed into the fire, idly scratching the line of his chin with a thumbnail. “Do people ever take seeds? To use as proposal gifts, or anything like that?”

“My Circle has met travelers seeking just that, yes. Just as I have met you.” 

“You’ve referred to a circle twice now. What is it?”

“It’s a druid thing. It can be as small as a group of druid families with a shared home and ideals, and as large as all who follow a certain tradition of our people. The Circle of which I have spoken is the former. They’re other druids I have met and learned from, though they range all through this valley and the forests beyond.”

“So spread out?” He was looking at me directly now, the shade of whatever had been on his mind now passed. 

“It’s our way. A life in the wilds is often a lonely one, but I have been fortunate. Not to mention that, once you spend enough time out here, the wildlife becomes easier to speak to. Not so lonely, then!” 

“And so that’s how you knew how to handle the bear, huh?”

“More or less.” I knelt down to retrieve my travel pack and rummaged around in it. “I have a little pemmican and dried mushrooms, if you’re hungry. I’m sure you didn’t plan on being this far off course.”

“I did, actually!” He reached for his own backpack and peered inside. “I got some salami, and a bottle of something… Mead?” He held it up, inspecting it. “Ah, well. It’ll be a surprise. And a nice block of cheese.”

“Cheese?” I felt myself begin to salivate. I hadn’t had cheese in months. 

He tossed me the salami. “I just kind of grabbed a bunch of things and threw it all in the bag. I didn’t have a lot of time to lurk about in the kitchen.” 

Not for the first time, I wondered about the everyday life of the hero who stood across the fire from me, and his powerful friends. The stories he’d shared during the afternoon had been fascinating, but I spent my life around dangerous creatures. I so seldom spent any time at all around other people, and almost never got to see people going about their daily routine. What was it like to spend your life in a city full of strangers? What did that life do to you? Were you constantly busy, or did all the bustle and activity become meaningless and boring? And however that life was like for your average person on the street, how different was it for you if you were  _ famous _ ? If  _ everyone _ in the city knew your face, and your history?

I tried to distract myself by drawing my belt knife; I began to cut the salami into precise discs of meat and stacked them neatly on a polished stone near the fire. Magnus came around to sit next to me, setting the bottle down between us. He snatched a slice of salami out of my hand as I started to put it down, and cackled gleefully. “Gotta watch yourself! I’m sneaky!”

“Don’t be too sneaky, or I won’t share any of my  _ good _ mushrooms,” I said as he popped the salami into his mouth.

“Good mushrooms?” 

“Trippy ones. They make you see giant pink bunnies.” I hesitated. “They make  _ me _ see giant pink bunnies. You might see something else. But they’re still fun.”

His eyes gleamed a moment. “I could prank Killian so good with some of those…” he whispered. 

I finished slicing the meat and pulled my own provisions out of my pack. Everything was wrapped separately in squares of muslin. I opened one of the smaller packets and held it out to him, offering up a handful of lovely orange chanterelles. I laughed when he hesitated. “These are normal mushrooms,” I assured him. “Normal, but delicious. No pink bunnies here.”

He took one, and took a cautious nibble. When oversized rodents failed to materialize, Magnus happily ate the whole piece in one bite, and a huge grin broke out on his face. “These are really good!”

“I sell them sometimes in the city. There’s a chef I know that always loses his shit whenever I bring some by. He tells me if he ever catches me selling them to anyone else, he’ll never forgive me, which would mean no more of his special pan-fried goat cheese.” I sighed. “That would be a tragedy.”

“That sounds good.” He took the hint and broke off a piece of cheese and passed it to me. It was mostly firm, only a little crumbly, and it smelled nutty. I closed my eyes and savored the feel of it on my tongue, and then the flavor filled my mouth. Every time I went into the wilds, I always missed cheese. 

Magnus pried the cork from the bottle and took a cautious sniff. “It’s not mead. Something pretty strong, though.” With his spare hand, he fished a polished wooden cup from his backpack and poured out a measure of something clear with strong alcoholic odor.  

I heard the calls of a group of ravens in the night; two of them swept past the cave mouth. They alit in a nearby tree and one called out. As I turned my attention away, the other opened its beak and my name came croaking out.

I snapped back to stare at it - even Magnus noticed, for I could hear him behind me, very carefully put his cup down and get to his feet. “Did the raven just talk?”

“Yes. They can.”

“So this isn’t… weird?”

I shook my head. “No. This is quite weird.”

“Okay,” he said quietly.

For the second time in twelve hours, my oak leaf tattoo grew warm. Alarmed, I grazed it with my fingertips - it was hot to the touch. For a mad moment, I wondered if I’d accidentally picked some very bad mushrooms indeed, when the heat in my chest washed away, just shy of becoming painful. I took a deep breath and held the cool night air in my lungs for a moment. As I exhaled, I began to notice eyes reflecting my firelights, out in the dark of the woods.

I got to my feet and turned to face Magnus. He was scowling, eyeing the growing group of watchers beyond me. “Something may be wrong with the forest,” I explained. “Let me talk to the creatures out there. I may have to go.”

“If you’re going anywhere, I’m coming with.”

“No. There could be quite a lot of danger.” He gave me a wan smile, and I stopped myself.

“Whatever it is,” Magnus told me, “it can’t be as dangerous to the  _ both _ of us.”

I nodded. I couldn’t say no to him. Not about this. He was also entirely right. “Can you clear the camp while I talk to our visitors, then, please?”

“You got it!”

I felt a moment of regret over the loss of more cheese this evening, but I rolled my shoulders, marched to the edge of the cave, and crouched down to say hello.

 

It was a cacophony. I was assaulted in every way in which I know how to communicate. It was too much to make sense of, so I called out to one of the ravens. Blissful silence rolled over the beasts before me. After a few tense breaths, the raven started cawing its head off. It took some time, but I was eventually able to make sense of what he was telling me, and what had roused all of the local animals.

“How’s it coming, Magnus?” I asked at last.

“Almost done. Just need to put out the fire.”

“I can do that. Do you have any rope?”

“Yep. Are we going to need to climb?” 

“No. We’re going deeper into the forest, and we need to move very quickly.” I turned to face him. “Ever wanted to ride a bear into a fight?”

 

It was probably a little cruel of me: he was immediately torn between what I had just suggested, and wanting to know what was going on. I relented before indecision killed him - as I helped him fashion a rough harness, I explained what the raven had told me.

“Three human-shaped creatures have been making their way through the forest. They had bones and matted fur all over them. A few ravens thought they were dead things, but they got too close and were killed - some kind of magic. Any place where they stop for a longer period of time, things die.”

“Oh, shit. That sounds bad.”

“They also seem to be heading for the Heartswood grove.”

His expression grew quite grim. “Let’s get going.”

 

We wasted no more time. In another few moments, I had cast a spell on Magnus to allow him to see in the dark, shifted into a grizzly bear form, and was kneeling down so he could rig the harness and climb onto my back. I’d never carried another person before, but there was no better way to intercept the intruders. I could smell them immediately: it was a reek of death and rot. 

The rope that was looped around me grew tight, and I felt Magnus settle himself on my back. “Ready to go,” he grunted, and then we were off.

 

You would think that anything the size of a bear would have a hard time getting up to any kind of a significant speed, but fortunately bears don’t care what you think. Carrying Magnus on my back slowed me down a little, but his weight wasn’t an issue as much as the harness pulling and chafing. I did my best to ignore it and focused on running. 

It took a little while, but I found a comfortable stride. The forest floor evened out, and I was able to hold the pace easily for the fifteen minutes it took to get near enough to see the glow of an open fire. I could hear the three figures cackle wildly at one another. Magnus shifted his weight on my back; I suddenly felt a lot more pull from the harness as he used it to help balance himself. 

Like your opinions, bears also don’t care much for stealth. Taking these creatures by surprise was never going to be an option, but I think we got lucky, somehow. They didn’t notice me charging at them until Magnus leapt from my back with a roar at one of them. His battleaxe flashed in the firelight, I crashed into one of the other creatures, and a searing crackle of electricity scored a line of pain along my side. I was at least rewarded with the satisfying  _ crack _ of bones that weren’t mine as we hit the ground. Foul talons tangled in the thick fur around my neck; I tried to bite at something - anything - but couldn’t get a good angle and my jaws snapped on air. There were screams around me. 

I roared in return and raised myself up to try to swipe one of my massive paws at this thing’s head. It looked like a human woman’s, but was covered in open, festering sores, and even pierced in places with bones that still had sinew and meat hanging from them. 

“Saro!” 

I couldn’t look away, not with that monster’s claws still at my throat. Instead of smashing that hideous skull, I put everything I had into a leap forward, off of and away from the hag. I shifted as I hit the ground, rolled, and came up to my feet in my normal form. For a moment, everything was awash in a gold-red glow, but I could still clearly see Magnus, holding off the attacks of the other two creatures. 

One of them tried to dart around to his flank, but recoiled when he lashed out with his axe, narrowly avoiding having one of her hands cut off. As he did so, the other clutched at his shield, trying to wrench it from his grasp. She nearly managed - he stumbled a bit but recovered and bashed the thing in the chest with the shield. I’d have never guessed these things would have been so strong!

Without thinking, I reached into one of my pouches and closed my hand around everything inside. There was a burst of heat in my palm, and then a pillar of silver light erupted over the hag between Magnus and me. She shrieked as her flesh was engulfed in pale flames, and I sagged from the effort casting the spell had cost me. 

Another crackle of lightning slammed into me, this time hitting me in the chest. The pain was incredible, but I managed to maintain the searing beam of moonlight. Magnus whirled his axe around him as though it were a child’s toy sword. He spun and cut, attacking again and again from any angle he could manage. His onslaught was too much for the monster before him - she howled as his weapon struck her full in the chest and collapsed to the forest floor. 

I couldn’t help but cheer as he wrenched the axe back, and turned to face the hag who’d only previously been held off by his shield. Instead, she turned and leaped at me, her filthy claws reaching for my face. Having nothing else at hand, I steeled myself, lowered my head, and slammed it into her face as she came at me. The creature’s talons raked into my hair and gouged a part of my cheekbone, but I heard Magnus roar in approval as I straightened up; I couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride at that.

It was short-lived, though. There was still one hag on her feet - the one who’d been throwing spells at me, but she’d saved one good one - I wish I’d have thought of it. In an instant, every muscle in my body seized up and I froze in place. I knew the spell and tried to shake it off, but failed in the face of the creature’s will and fury, and so was held so tightly, I couldn’t even move my eyes. 

“I’ve got your friend,” the monster cooed at Magnus as she staggered towards me. I say ‘cooed’, but it’s difficult to coo with a voice like a hungover vomit and breath like the putrid corpse of a diseased boar. Still, she made the effort. 

The other hag got to her feet - I hadn’t quite gotten the job done. Damn. “Maybe this one isn’t a friend after all,” she remarked. Her eyes gleamed in mad delight. “Do you see what this one is? Do you see the blood of the fiend?” She seized my hand and dragged me to my knees, forcing my head to one side so she could tear out a handful of my hair to reveal a tight, curled horn that arced back over my head. I couldn’t even scream in pain.

I stared at the ground, my heart in my throat. I ached from the lightning blasts, I could scarcely breathe, and I had no idea what would happen next.

“Saro, you’re a tiefling?”

“A fiend called Sorrow!” cackled the creature nearest me. Her tone grew sharp and cold. “Fiends belong in the hells,” she snarled. “Maybe we do you a favor? We remove this thing for you, yes?”

“Saro is not a thing,” Magnus growled. I raged against the spell holding me, but could not break free. 

“Can’t make friends with a fiend,” wheedled the other hag. “A fiend knows only betrayal and torment.” I’d have gritted my teeth if I could. These monsters certainly knew what betrayal and torment looked like, of that I was sure. 

“Saro is my friend. No matter what.”

“Fine, then!” In a flurry, the hag nearest me had her hands wrapped around my throat, claws just shy of cutting me open. “Such a good friend you are to a fiend! You do as we say, you can keep having your friendly fiend!”

“Or else…” The silence hung in the air. My vision started to get blurry. I couldn’t even blink. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take your axe,” snapped one. It was getting hard to tell which of the two was speaking. “Go to the grove ahead and destroy the trees. Set it on fire. Then you save your fiend friend.” The two hags erupted in delighted laughter.

“Saro,” Magnus said quietly, “I’m hoping this is what you want.” In my peripheral vision, I saw his axe come gently down.

I fell to the ground and lay there a moment, stunned. There was pain. Then came screams. Then I caught a flash of silver as the axe flashed out of my field of vision.

 

That’s almost certainly not the correct order in which things happened, but I was pretty close to blacking out.

 

I made it to my knees on my own. I had to lean against a tree to strand. The hags had unleashed a barrage of vicious attacks on Magnus - he was holding them off, but they weren’t giving him much of an opportunity to return them in kind. I took a deep breath and threw out a hand. I knew this spell, but had never had to use it; I’d only even even seen it cast once, but I always kept it in my back pocket, in case I ran into something truly dangerous. I shouted the command words, and once again the night glowed red-gold as my fel blood flared. A roiling wave of darkness flowed out over my arms and engulfed the hag who had nearly torn open my throat. She began to shriek and flail, and the flesh on her arms and face withered like a worm too close to a fire.  

No longer forced to divide his attention, Magnus raised the axe above his head and brought it crashing down on the skull of the last creature. We stood there, panting and wild-eyed, waiting for one of them, any of them, to show any signs of life. At last, he took a deep breath and asked, “What next?”

“We need to burn them. They’re nothing but corruption, and they will poison this place.” I saw his gaze flicker up to the trees that surrounded us. “I can see to it that we don’t burn the rest of the forest around us.”

“Ok.” 

“We won’t need kindling. We can just pile them up.” 

He looked a bit queasy for a moment, then straightened sharply. “Saro, you’re bleeding, like, a lot.”

I grunted. I hadn’t wanted to think about that. I fell back against the tree. “Shit.” 

“Shit!” I heard him start to rummage in his pack. It was getting hard to see. “I think I’ve got a health potion in here!”

“I can heal myself. I’ve got a few more spells in me.” I swallowed, took a moment to steady myself, and tapped into that rejuvenating essence within me. Energy washed through me, the pain dropped back, and I found myself able to stand, and focus. The demon blood within me still pulsed, and danced, and I realized I was looking forward to this far more than I should have been, but I did not care. “Right. Let’s light these things up.”

 

As the flames burned the corpses of our foes, Magnus and I managed to clean off most of the filth that covered us. We rested and watched the fire. I gave him chanterelles, he gave me cheese. Once I felt confident that the monsters had been fully consumed and were no longer a danger to the forest, I looked over at Magnus, who hadn’t spoken much. “We can keep resting here, or we can go to the grove. It’s only another mile or two away, now. Either way, I believe we’ll be quite safe for the night, wherever we stop.”

He didn’t look at me. “I don’t want to spend the night here.”

I nodded. “I’ll put out the fire.”

 

We walked away from the scene of battle, and after about ten minutes of silence, Magnus finally asked me, “You mentioned earlier you were partly elvish, right?”

“I did. I am.”

“Is that why your eyes don’t always do the tiefling thing?”

I chuckled.  “As far as we could tell, yes. From what I understand, most tieflings are from human lines. The fey blood and the fiend blood mix a little differently, it seems.” 

He mulled over this. “Doesn’t sound…” 

“Hm?”

“Oh. Um.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just seems like you haven’t been around a lot of other tieflings. From the way you talk.” 

“No. I came to the wilds to live with the druids of my father’s Circle at a pretty young age.”

“Have you ever wanted to? Hang out with other tieflings, I mean?”

“Nah,” I lied. “Most tieflings end up going evil, so they say, so I don’t think it’d be much fun.” I thought a moment. “Or too much fun.”

“Well, if you ever get tired of hanging out in the wilds, you should come and visit me in Raven’s Roost.”

“Raven’s Roost? Really? Did they rebuild it?”

He smiled grimly. “I’m workin’ on it.” 

“I look forward to seeing it.”

 

We soon started to see the glow of fireflies darting through the trees, and I felt a rare level of relaxation. We had reached the grove. Heartswood trees filled the area, mixed with some oak, aspen, and birch. Something about the grove put off an aura of calm. I glanced over, and saw a delighted grin spreading across Magnus’s face. He felt it, too. “I’m really glad we ended up coming here tonight.” 

I was, too. 

 

I found a place where we could sleep comfortably, nestled in a bed of spongy moss growing over a tangle of oak roots. The night was a little cool, but hardly uncomfortable - Magnus was snoring away before I’d even gotten a chance to settle in. I opted to not start a fire for the night. It didn’t feel necessary for safety, and I didn’t like the idea of letting a fire go while I slept - not after the evening I’d had already. 

As I wrapped my coat around me more tightly and leaned against the tree trunk that was my pillow, I murmured a prayer to Silvanus one last time. I’d been blessed with his guidance, and possibly also his protection. With his name on my lips, I fell into slumber.

 

I woke to dawn’s light turning the canopy of red leaves over me into a ceiling of gleaming rubies. There was an odd weight on my chest, and when I raised my head to find out why, I got a face full of badger fart. 

I swatted at its butt and it shuffled off my chest with a low grumble. Other woodland creatures were cuddled up around me, sleeping peacefully. I dislodged several as I sat up - they all scampered away as the temporary peace was broken. Magnus, somehow, had rolled onto the back of a cow moose that had laid down beside him - he was sprawled across her with his face nestled against her neck. She gave me a look that only a moose is capable of and got to her feet. Magnus slid off her back to the ground in a heap; he sat up with wide eyes and an expression that perfectly matched that of the squirrel that popped up from the tangle of hair on his head. It chittered angrily at me before making a flying leap to the nearest tree, and then it was gone.

“What was that about?”

I got to my feet and brushed clinging moss and a few downy quail feathers from my coat. “I didn’t think to ask. It felt like a ‘thank you’ from the forest, though.”

“Was I spooning a moose?”

“I’ll never tell a soul,” I lied. 

 

Together we broke our fast on a bit of the food we hadn’t finished from the night before, and took care of other morning things privately. I took a few moments to mentally prepare myself for the day as I always did, and let my mind sink into the soul of the forest, exploring it with my senses and seeking out the reason for our journey there. 

Magnus touched me gently on the shoulder, bringing me out of my meditation and back to myself. I blinked at him a few times as my awareness returned. “There’s a tree on the eastern edge of the grove that should work very well for you. There was a rockslide in the storm last night. It made a mess of things. And it’s only a couple miles away.”

 

It only took half an hour at an easy stroll through the grove before we began to see glimpses of the bluffs through breaks in the canopy. Magnus spotted the place where an outcropping on the bluffs above had slipped away, and so we angled towards it. When we finally came upon the dying Heartswood tree, almost completely uprooted by boulders that had careened into it, I felt a twinge of sadness at the sight. Other trees had been felled, and several lay splintered and crushed beneath the weight of the earth that had fallen in the night. This one had taken too much damage, and all that was left was for it to wither and rot. Magnus looked to me for confirmation, and when I nodded, he took his battle axe in hand. 

“Wait a moment, please,” I said as he approached the tree. I could see a mother cardinal flying around the tree in great, arcing swoops, calling out in what sounded to be distress, and in another moment, I saw why. The tree, already so close to losing its grip on the earth, was home to her nest, and it was about the right time for there to be eggs or hatchlings inside it. 

“What’s up?”

“Gonna maybe save some baby birds,” I replied, pointing. 

“How are you going to do that?”

“Carefully.” I spread my arms wide as my body morphed into a form I loved, but seldom took. I leaped into the air as a falcon, which surely terrified the poor mother cardinal as I flew directly towards the branch supporting her nest and little family. Even as light as I was in that form, the tree shifted and groaned when I alit on the branch near the nest. There was one egg within it - I could see another had slipped and fallen to the ground. The nest, too, was in a precarious position. 

There was no easy way to do this. I took to the air once more, took a few loops around and through the tree branches to make sure I could get the angle I’d need, and then dove for the nest, snatching at it with both of my feet. The nest came away easily - I prayed that the little speckled egg within wasn’t lost. It was awkward flying with it, but I managed, and found a sturdy oak tree farther into the grove in which I could deposit my cargo. A hawk’s talons are not made for gentleness, and so as I attempted to set down the little nest in a sturdy U-shaped fork in a branch, I wished I’d have come up with a form capable of more delicacy. 

I hopped back on the branch a bit and examined the nest. The little speckled egg was still there, tucked underneath a pair of twigs. The mother cardinal was perched above me, tittering anxiously. I leapt off the branch and let the hawk form drop away as I touched the ground. Magnus stood there at the base of the tree, patiently, his arms crossed over the handle of his axe. “Did you save them?”

“Yep. The tree is all yours, now.”

He grinned and, in one smooth action, snatched up his axe and raised it high. He seemed to study the tree a moment, as if deciding the best place to strike, and the axe came down in a crisp arc, and instead of the sharp and heavy  _ thunk  _ sound I’d expected, there came a vicious  _ crack _ . I jumped back, and the tree smashed to the ground. 

I didn’t carry much more than a hand axe at the time, so I couldn’t help to reduce the tree into more manageable bits, but, once a sizeable section of trunk had been separated from the crown of the tree, I cleared away everything that would be a hindrance. The smaller bits that had broken off in the fall were the easiest, and so I dragged those off into the grove first, and tried to arrange them to form little shelters for the smaller beasts of the forest. With each trip I made, I collected more seeds from the tree, shaken loose from all this activity. 

Magnus worked tirelessly, but with clean efficiency, so that he soon had a neat stack of logs even before I finished clearing the area. He helped me with the heaviest remaining portions of the tree, and when we agreed that our task was complete, Magnus brought out the bottle of mystery alcohol. As we passed the bottle back and forth, I found a few spare scraps of cloth, and bundled up a handful of the seeds, as well as my remaining chanterelle mushrooms. “If you want a good place to eat before you head on back to Raven’s Roost,” I told him as I handed the little bag over, “there’s a little town called Divrin at the top of the bluffs, up there.” I pointed; from where we stood at the edge of the grove, you could just see the top of a watchtower. “It’s about an hour and a half’s hike. The Bearhugger Inn is the finest building in town, and if you tell them I sent you, Goldy will make you some of his fried goat cheese. It’s amazing. And then you can probably talk Old Mean Fred into letting you come by his kennel. He breeds and trains hunting dogs. You’ll love it.”

“Why do they call him Old Mean Fred?” 

I shrugged. “Small town humor, I guess. He’s only twenty-five, and he’ll laugh at any joke you tell him.”

Magnus gave me a sidelong glance, offering me the bottle again, but I waved it off. “You don’t want to come with me? You said it’s only an hour and a half hike.”

I glanced up at the top of the bluff again, and felt a bit of wind ruffle my hair enough that I felt a sudden chill on my exposed horn. Something tightened, just a bit, in my chest. I shook my head, rubbing my palms together restively. “I’m not used to being around a lot of people,” I said at last. “And you’re going to draw quite a crowd. I’m not ready to go back into civilization again quite yet.”

“Oh.” He seemed to take a moment to consider this, then shrugged diffidently. “Well, whenever you do feel ready to come back to civilization, I meant what I said about coming to visit in Raven’s Roost. You’ll always be welcome.”

“Thank you. I promise I’ll take you up on it.” We shook hands, then, and it felt like as solid a binding as I’d ever known. Raven’s Roost was a long way away, but distance never feels like a problem when you can fly. I helped Magnus pack each of his logs into a bag that swallowed them as though they were pebbles - a bag of Holding, he explained to me - and then directed him to the best spot at which to start hiking up the bluffs. 

He looked back once, and gave me a wave. I turned away as he did, heading back into the crimson grove where everything felt calm and peaceful. I let the aura of the grove wash over me, seep into my being and my soul; once I reached a moment of perfect serenity, I leaped up from the ground and shot into the air as a streak of red-gold feathers. 

I’m one of those idiot druids that doesn’t take advantage of the ability to fly whenever they want. 

But that’s going to change. 


End file.
